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Fertilizer is actually the problem. The soil is losing magnesium because we don't practice crop rotation anymore, so we load up the soil with fertilizer, 90% of

Fertilizer is actually the problem. The soil is losing magnesium because we don't practice crop rotation anymore, so we load up the soil with fertilizer, 90% of which runs off into our watersheds, wreaking havoc. It can be solved by using less efficient / more complex farming practices which aren't amenable to mass production of monocultures. But that makes a lot less money, so it will never happen. A different solution would be to pass legislation specifically to protect the nutritional value of our food. But that would just prompt the ag sector to pump the soil full of so much crap to meet the law's requirements that it'll speed up the collapse of ecological systems (in addition to possibly poisoning us).

Moru 5y ago
A couple of years ago where was a very long draught in northern europe. The only fields that weren't burned brown was the new ecological farms that reinvented farming the old way. Their soil is kept alive deeper into the ground and can hold water much longer. So while their neighbours had to buy feed for their cows, the eco farmers could keep using their grass for feeding.
xyzzyz 5y ago
> It can be solved by using less efficient / more complex farming practices which aren't amenable to mass production of monocultures. But that makes a lot less money, so it will never happen. “Makes less money” is certainly one point of view. Another is “makes the food too expensive to afford for many, and shifts more land usage to farming, to make up for the reduced productivity per acre”. It is not even clear that it would reduce the profits of food producers: it depends on the shapes on supply curves. If every food producer is forced to produce food using expensive methods, and people are forced to buy food anyway (as they ultimately must eat), it is very well possible that the profits could actually increase: if demand for food is inelastic, people will just pay higher prices to get the same amount of food, which would only increase the total profits of agricultural industry.
- kaitai 5y ago
  Agricultural policy in the US shapes a lot of this, though, via subsidies. The financial system also shapes this through its lending policies. The implements of industrialized farming are what the ag lending sector is designed around; try to step out of that mainstream and you will have trouble accessing capital. Wheat, corn, and soybeans are heavily subsidized by the US gov't and vegetables are not at all. Every little tiny program to subsidize vegetable growers is picked at every year (happening right now in my state legislature) -- it's always a fight to preserve. The agricultural lending system in the US is fascinating. Look up Farm Credit Administration. We have a weird and unique system of paragovernmental financial institutions in the US that do farm lending, and even though it's not technically government-backed lending, everyone sees it as such, and so there are some interesting distortions in the market (compared to a more "free-market" system). It does seem quite centered around US gov't subsidies and farm/ag policies.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    That's because wheat, corn, and soybeans are staples, while vegetables are luxury food items, especially fresh ones. At no point in history, regular people in agricultural societies ate as much vegetables as we do right now. The diets has always been based in overwhelming majorities on grains, roots and beans, and in places with lactose tolerance, also on dairy. A single bell pepper today costs something between $1 and $2 where I am. Imagine the government subsidizes bell peppers so that they cost $.50. As a single bell pepper has less than 50 calories, you couldn't base your diet on it, you would still need some more calorie-rich food to actually give you required energy. Since vegetables (except root vegetables) are not calorie-dense, you'd need to eat seeds (e.g. grains) or oils anyway. That's why, if your goal is to enable the nation to feed itself, you should rather subsidize the staples, not luxury consumption.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Rich nations don't have problems supplying calories. In fact they have the opposite problem, people eat too many calories. There is an obesity crisis underway.

Moru 5y ago

A couple of years ago where was a very long draught in northern europe. The only fields that weren't burned brown was the new ecological farms that reinvented farming the old way. Their soil is kept alive deeper into the ground and can hold water much longer. So while their neighbours had to buy feed for their cows, the eco farmers could keep using their grass for feeding.

xyzzyz 5y ago

> It can be solved by using less efficient / more complex farming practices which aren't amenable to mass production of monocultures. But that makes a lot less money, so it will never happen. “Makes less money” is certainly one point of view. Another is “makes the food too expensive to afford for many, and shifts more land usage to farming, to make up for the reduced productivity per acre”. It is not even clear that it would reduce the profits of food producers: it depends on the shapes on supply curves. If every food producer is forced to produce food using expensive methods, and people are forced to buy food anyway (as they ultimately must eat), it is very well possible that the profits could actually increase: if demand for food is inelastic, people will just pay higher prices to get the same amount of food, which would only increase the total profits of agricultural industry.

kaitai 5y ago
Agricultural policy in the US shapes a lot of this, though, via subsidies. The financial system also shapes this through its lending policies. The implements of industrialized farming are what the ag lending sector is designed around; try to step out of that mainstream and you will have trouble accessing capital. Wheat, corn, and soybeans are heavily subsidized by the US gov't and vegetables are not at all. Every little tiny program to subsidize vegetable growers is picked at every year (happening right now in my state legislature) -- it's always a fight to preserve. The agricultural lending system in the US is fascinating. Look up Farm Credit Administration. We have a weird and unique system of paragovernmental financial institutions in the US that do farm lending, and even though it's not technically government-backed lending, everyone sees it as such, and so there are some interesting distortions in the market (compared to a more "free-market" system). It does seem quite centered around US gov't subsidies and farm/ag policies.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  That's because wheat, corn, and soybeans are staples, while vegetables are luxury food items, especially fresh ones. At no point in history, regular people in agricultural societies ate as much vegetables as we do right now. The diets has always been based in overwhelming majorities on grains, roots and beans, and in places with lactose tolerance, also on dairy. A single bell pepper today costs something between $1 and $2 where I am. Imagine the government subsidizes bell peppers so that they cost $.50. As a single bell pepper has less than 50 calories, you couldn't base your diet on it, you would still need some more calorie-rich food to actually give you required energy. Since vegetables (except root vegetables) are not calorie-dense, you'd need to eat seeds (e.g. grains) or oils anyway. That's why, if your goal is to enable the nation to feed itself, you should rather subsidize the staples, not luxury consumption.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Rich nations don't have problems supplying calories. In fact they have the opposite problem, people eat too many calories. There is an obesity crisis underway.